Opera North, September 2023
Opera North’s music director Garry Walker is in the pit. He and the orchestra surpass themselves in a reading of the score in which both the wondrous detail of the composer’s invention and his sheer musical wit are superbly realised.
George Hall, The Stage ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s conducted with superlative skill by Opera North music director Garry Walker, fulfilling his observation of its “almost soufflé-esque lightness” with delicacy and poise, and some highly spirited tempi. Keeping everything together, voices and orchestra, in that manner is both difficult and immensely rewarding, but he and they did it with barely a moment’s falter.
Robert Beale, The Arts Desk ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Conductor Garry Walker drives the Opera North Orchestra vigorously, and coaxes some delicate sonorities from the wind in the wonderfully scored third act
Nicholas Kenyon, The Telegraph ★ ★ ★ ★
And, bubbling along through the whole opera, the Opera North orchestra supplies outstandingly vibrant, witty and detailed playing under Garry Walker’s direction.
Richard Morrison, The Times ★ ★ ★ ★